I hadn't planned to do this but I've become a bit emotionally aroused by some recent events and I'm going on a little rant, so please bear with me. Today, of course, is the ninth anniversary of 9/11. Make no mistake, I lost friends in the Pentagon and had friends who survived that terrible day, some of whom were permanently scarred, emotionally if not physically. In recent days and weeks the media has been abuzz with stories of the mosque people don't want built near Ground Zero and this preacher who wants to burn the Koran and how the Moslim world is rising up in reaction. The Moslim world can't even understand why the U.S. government doesn't just step in and prevent the burning because they don't appreciate that we live in a country where such expressions are protected under our (secular) constitution. In my life-time I've seen the Vietnam War and how that tore the country apart. I've witnessed the various foreign entanglements we've gotten involved in around the world, including Beirut, Panama, Grenada, two campaigns in Iraq and one in Afganistan. I had hoped that the internet and this shrinking world of ours would have brought people together and let them see how others we share this world with live and think but that doesn't seem to be the case. Better communications have only served to spread the hate even faster around the globe. We are talking AT each other and not TO one another. Mostly what I hear as we observe this anniversary of 9/11 and in the run-up to the mid-term elections is a voice of hate and fear and loathing. It's become a world of us and them with only a lonely sentinal left to survey the aftermath and ask why we can't listen and learn.
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